Archive for August, 2011

Food photography has been with us . . . well, since there was photography. But then, there is FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY. That “It looks so good, I can taste it!” photography. That “It’s making me hungry photography!” You know what I am talking about. Prime examples are the Red Lobster video ads with butter dripping off seafood. Don’t they make you hungry, even after you just ate? Now, look at your food images. Are they the victim of flat lighting Do they lack color? Do they make anyone hungry?

Almost everyone has a digital camera. Some have better digital cameras than others. Many have a small strobe built into the camera, while others may use a flash unit that fits in a shoe on the camera. For a commercial pro, that would be the lighting of last resort just to document something. This is the worst lighting one could use, especially for food. Any small thing or element that is white or very light gets blown out and loses detail, like sour cream or whipped cream. If the food image is mostly white or light colored, like vanilla ice cream, the strobe and camera may automatically adjust to make it gray, or a darker color, instead. Did you ever wonder why the image you tried to take that reflected the flash back displayed as dark or a sickly shade of brown? That is because the auto-exposure feature of the flash read only the brightest spot in the frame and shut down the strobe before it was able to light the darker areas. Silverware, other bright metal, and glass have a habit of reflecting very bright hot spots with flat lighting.

Great food photography all has one thing in common: great lighting, which includes positioning the lighting to better enhance the food. It is critical. It all starts there. See Example 1.

Example 1 - Click on image to enlarge.

See how the glistening highlights make this look juicy and delicious? To make better-looking food images, the main lighting comes from the back, sides, or above to reflect on the food (in this case with a soft box). Overall ceiling room lights don’t serve this purpose, nor does a flash mounted directly on a camera. To see examples of what I see as overall room lighting or direct flash lighting for a similar food dish as Example 1, click here . Of course, the services of a great food styl ist and a lot of post-production work is done in Photoshop to get the color and look found in Example 1.

It is said that a picture is worth a whole lot of words (1000, 10000, or the amount to be determined by the viewer) . I say that a great food image is worth that many more sales. If you are selling food, it pays to do a lot more work creating your food images, or you could hire We Shoot. You can find us at weshoot.com.

We just finished a product shoot where the client first tried to take the pictures himself. That did not give him the results he wanted for his business promotion. He called a friend with “A really good camera,” and the results were, shall we say, less than stellar. He called us and showed us the images his friend had taken. While he indeed may have had a really good camera, his friend lacked the skills and equipment necessary to show the products in the absolute best light (pun intended). For most product photography, it is all about the lighting and knowing how to use it. It is not about the camera, lens, or resolution (sufficiency in each is all that is needed). Quality of lighting – diffused or harsh, color of lighting, and its relationship to white balance are all factors. Lighting shape is a factor – square, round, or some other shape. How will the light reflect off the subject? Using an umbrella to spread out the light when shooting a mirrored surface will show the ribbing in the umbrella in reflection. Is a spotlight required? How is that accomplished? When should one use continuous lighting (such as hot lights), or should one use strobes? What are the advantages of each?

When we were done and presented the final images to our client, he said that he felt bad that he wasn’t using his friend’s images. But then he said this was about making money from his business and increasing same, and although he didn’t want to make his friend unhappy, he wanted to use these images to make money. And that is the bottom line. I am including some images as samples. They have nothing to do with the above-mentioned product shoot, but are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Sample 1 is an image I took to illustrate really poor photography. I used the flash built into a pro-sumer DSLR and the image is badly out of focus (on purpose). It is underexposed. It is taken against a dark busy background, and there is no editing whatsoever of the image. I have seen shots like this on eBay, and even company websites when someone is trying to promote their products – anything from a widget to a building. Except for the fact that the image cost nothing to create (once the camera has been purchased), there is nothing good to say about it. In fact, bad photography could be hiding flaws in the product, as far as the viewer knows. If the photography is bad, whatever the company is selling is suspect – if corners are cut with the photos, what corners were cut with the product? For a better chance at selling an item with a photograph, a bit of work will be involved.

Sample 1 - Click to Enlarge

Sample 2 is against a white fomecore background and had two AC-powered studio strobes with soft boxes opposite each other at each end of the shaver to show texture in the shaver, and to highlight stainless steel cutting heads. The soft boxes spread light out with very diffused lighting and bring out a lot of detail with no harsh shadows. There is some minor enhancement with Photoshop in this sample.

Sample 2 - Click to Enlarge

In sample 3, I have made a “clipping path” to trace out the shaver from the original background, rotated the image vertically, and made a background layer with Photoshop in which I made a gradient of black and red. Some more enhancement was done with Photoshop, including making the glowing yellow-green lights on either side of the on-off switch to simulate the look when the shaver is switched on. Now you may ask why I didn’t take it with the shaver “on,” instead of simulating the look. First, the shaver probably wouldn’t stay in position with the vibration of the shaver running, and also because I had more control of how it looks in the output this way.

Sample 3 - Click to Enlarge

Now, which sample image would you choose to promote your product?

I will help you get close to sample 2 results, but you have to have some other props and accessories and do extra work to get there. First get something white (for a dark subject) as a background , like a piece of fomecore. It also helps reflect white light onto a dark object. If shooting a light-colored or white object, you might want to go with gray or black as a background to contrast. Next, go to a store like Lowe’s or Home Depot and buy several clamp light housings (see http://bit.ly/o3p5cP ) and a commensurate number of daylight compact fluorescent bulbs. This won’t work as well as strobes with soft-boxes, but it will beat using a camera-mounted strobe. Try different lighting positions until you get the lighting, shadows, and highlights you desire. You will also need a tripod and a camera capable of taking a time exposure and allowing the flash to be deactivated. You may also need to set the white balance (check your camera or editing program documentation to see how to do that ). Make sure to get sharp focus. Getting too close to the subject reduces depth-of-field, and some part of the subject will go out of focus. Take several shots at different exposures to get the best one. It may take more tries to get exactly what you want.

To get to sample 3 results, you will need a photo-editing program, and know enough on how to work with images for given results. That is not within the scope of this article. Really good product image editing takes knowledge, experience, and patience. It can be time consuming and a lot of hard work. It also helps to know a few enhancement secrets and have a lot of Photoshop experience. That’s why I still get work, even if my client has a “really good camera.”